


broken barrow

by sunlian



Category: Jade Empire
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Implied Character Death, Spoilers, prose, so there, yes it’s an ancient game now but I have treasured friends who haven’t finished it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 06:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13969590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlian/pseuds/sunlian
Summary: the world is made up of lies, half-truths and facts.grief has a way of making them painful.





	broken barrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silentbutsure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentbutsure/gifts).



> written for a friend of mine, who wanted a short piece on lians grief following The Betrayal. i used her fav pc instead of the one i usually use for my je stuff, but that doesn’t rly matter bc all of them are angels. 
> 
> also, final warning for my lovely supportive friends who might be reading this despite having not finished the game; BIG SPOILERS AHEAD PLS DO NOT READ JUST YET

The Lotus Assassins say; _we can bring people back from the dead._

For once, it wasn’t a total lie; they could force a spirit back into its’ body, make it breathe and walk and see again. 

But to say the brought ‘people’ back- no, that’s not what they do. The bodies are husks, the spirit reduced to a battery. The person is still dead, their body just hasn’t followed.

When the Assassins force the spirit back into the cold body, something breaks. Something important, something delicate. Something that made that person themselves. It shatters, it seperates. It becomes lost. Only raw things remain; pain, anguish, the basic functions of living, but it ‘lives’ without life. 

Perhaps this is how they discovered golems; first flesh, then stone, then jade. 

(The golems will sweep across the Empire, across the sea, perhaps into Heaven Itself. It doesn’t matter how they were discovered, not anymore. No one can stop them, stop him. She wants to care, but the only thing she can focus on is the raw, bleeding pain in her heart.)

The scholars say; _ghosts that linger on the mortal plane grow insane._

That is very true. That is something she has seen with her own eyes, all over the Empire. Lingering, lost remnants of people, stuck in a place not meant for them. 

She saw the ghosts when she stepped outside the city for the first time, long before she faced down her first Assassin. 

They’re sad, in a way, even when they’re maddened and twisted beyond anything recognisable as ‘human.’ Sheep without a shepherd, cursed to be cut down, dispersed, or appeased, unable to truly pass on. 

Admittedly, she didn’t the issue as seriously as she could’ve; steel doesn’t hurt spirits the way it did Lotus Assassins, and a horde of ghosts weren’t ever going to try and take over the Imperial Court. 

Ironic, in hindsight, that a ghost was already the head of the Court, one who had seated his crumbling corpse on the throne of the Empire.

(Lost and separate and dead, dead dead dead, a ghost trapped in what was supposed to be the hall of her triumph, betrayed and broken and now she’s alone. Why did she let Wu convince her she could be anything else but alone? Why did she have to show her how alone she was? Why did she have to die?)

Her favourite nursemaid once said; everyone is born deserving of love. 

Perhaps the woman was right. Perhaps she does deserve it. 

But she is the Heavenly Lily, and she was not meant to keep it.

 

 


End file.
